The Terridae

Chapter Fifteen

It was a red flood which filled the universe and left him gasping and weak in its savage ferocity. Dumarest had known pain before but this had come with total unexpectedness- and this body was not his own.

He reared, seeing the skull-like visage of the cyber inches above his own. The face turned carmine as Dumarest stained it with the blood he spat from his mouth. As Lim retreated Dumarest struck at the throat, missed, and followed the blow with another with the same result. Fury vented on thin air and effort which tore at his lungs and filled the universe with a fresh tide of pain.

Dumarest rolled to hands and knees, coughed a scarlet flood and fought a mountain of pain to climb to his feet. Staggering, he reached the support of the edge of the door.

From where he stood, well out of reach, Lim said, "Do not attempt anything foolish. I will not hesitate to cripple you should you try."

A machine with a laser in his hand and blood on his face. Carmine which matched the scarlet of his robe and soiled the glitter of the sigil on his breast. One who could feel no anger, know no fear.

Dumarest said, "Why?"

"You made mistakes. Small things which accumulated, but the biggest of all was to take me for a fool. Did you really think I was so inefficient as not to recognize the charade?"

"I don't understand." If the cyber knew the truth there was no point in verifying it. If he was guessing then to be honest was to be stupid. "You hit me." Dumarest lifted a hand to his chest, face registering agony which was real. "I fainted, I think, then you hit me. My reward, cyber? Is that how the Cyclan pays its debts?"

"Sit." Lim gestured to the table, the chair. "Take wine. It contains a stimulant."

One he needed and Dumarest poured a glass full as the cyber left to wash the blood from his face and change into a clean robe. To be dirty was to be inefficient and he saw no immediate urgency demanding his presence. Hulse took his place, the acolyte standing well to one side. Dumarest studied him as he swallowed the wine.

A man a little too cautious and so too highly strung. One who must lose his concentration after a while as the body, keyed for immediate action, rebelled against the strain. Then would be the moment to act if action was possible but Dumarest knew that it was not.

He drank more wine, indifferent as to what it might contain, needing the chemical strength it could give. The stimulant sharpened his senses but did nothing to dull his pain. A calculated effect, he guessed, Lim would not want him to be comfortable.

Dumarest coughed and dabbing at his lips, looked at the bright scarlet on his hand. Blood which he had spat into Lim's face to blind him. An attack which had failed and he knew again the hurt of inadequacy. He had misjudged, mistimed. His arms had been too short, his reactions too slow. The body he wore was alien in more ways than one. He almost felt hampered by leaden weights. Was this how it felt to be a woman?

Dumarest reached for more wine as Lim returned and tensed, the decanter in his hand. Hulse came to remove it at the cyber's signal, moving in close enough for his skull to be smashed, but Dumarest doubted his ability to hit hard and clean. In any case to kill the acolyte would serve no purpose. He released the decanter and watched as it was removed together with the glass. Lim moved so as to face him.

"Did the wine help?"

"A little. I must apologize for what happened. Blood was choking me and pain made me strike out."

"Errors to add to the rest."

Dumarest said, "You talk in riddles. I'm hurt and could be dying. Have someone help me to my cabin and send for medical aid."

"You will not die." Lim was confident. "Not for a long time. And you will have everything you need for your comfort if you will just do one small thing." He stepped forward and placed a sheet of paper together with a stylo on the table. "Just write down the correct sequence of the units forming the affinity twin."

"What?" Dumarest looked blank. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Fifteen units," mused the cyber. "Millions of possible combinations and it will take millennia to make and test them all. But you have the secret and you will give it to me."

"You?"

"The Cyclan. It belongs to us. It was stolen from us. Now write. Waste no more time."

Dumarest coughed a spatter of blood over the paper. "You're mad," he said. "Mad!"

"Let us end this farce." Lim's voice did not change its even modulation but the freshly washed face tautened a little, became more like a skull. "When she left for Zabul Carina Davaranch carried no drugs. Obviously she must have obtained them after landing. But from where? And why should she anticipate the need? My instructions were firm and covered all eventualities. By my orders Dumarest had been stripped and wore nothing but a thin robe. Aside from physical violence the woman had nothing to fear and she was armed against that." The laser lifted in his hand. "She could have crippled the man, seared his eyes, done anything as long as she did not hurt his brain or endanger his life. And the forces of Zabul were with her. They had no reason to risk the safety of their world for a stranger."

"So?"

"An ampule. A red ampule. Cattaneo saw it in your hand when he entered the room. You claimed to have used it on Dumarest. A possibility but there is another explanation." Pausing, Lim added, "How did you get that puncture mark in your neck?"

"An attack. I was struck."

"On the face but not on the throat. There is no sign of bruising."

"You condemn me for that?"

"That and other things. The way you walk, for example; it is not easy to emulate a foreign stride. The way you attacked-no woman would use her fists in such a way. Your term of address-Carina Davaranch had more respect."

"I am she."

"Then tell me the number of your cabin."

A guess, he could only make a guess, but it was one he had to make. "Eleven."

"Eight. You see how you betray yourself?" The laser steadied to aim at Dumarest's right elbow. "You are not Carina Davaranch. There is only one other person you could be. Now, Earl Dumarest, write down the sequence of the affinity twin."

Dumarest said, "You're crazy. If I was the man you say, what the hell am I doing on the Saitol?"

The sac rested where it had been placed in the hold of the vessel, the figure beneath the transparent membrane lying as though dead. A strong, well-made body, the pale amber robe doing little to mask the contours of bone and muscle. The man for whom the Cyclan had hunted so long-or was it?

If Dumarest was in the woman's body then what was his own doing on the ship?

Lim turned, thoughtful, his face a mask as he assessed the probabilities. Dumarest was far from being stupid but this smacked of idiocy. Why use the affinity twin at all if he intended to board the Saito?

The answer could lie in his blindly instinctive attack which had so pathetically failed. To kill Lim and then to destroy the vessel and all within it. The same destruction freeing his intelligence from the host-body and allowing him to wake in his own. But, in that case, why bring his own body on the vessel? If he intended to destroy the ship how could he hope to avoid total erasure along with it?

"Master." Cattaneo bowed as he approached. "Is the sac to be opened and the man placed in the prepared cabin?"

The woman had been against it and her objections had made sense. But the woman was only a shell for the intelligence within, and Dumarest must have had his own reasons for not wanting the sac to be opened. Did it contain his body at all?

Logic dictated it did not. To have used the affinity twin to take over the woman's body and so gain access to the vessel made sense if his objective had been to destroy it. To transport his own body with him-no, there were too many objections against it. The figure within the sac had to be a dummy. But how had the exchange been accomplished?

To Cattaneo Lim said, "After you had placed Dumarest in the sac and sealed it what happened?"

"Nothing, master. We carried it from the room to the loading port." He added more details as Lim waited. "We walked ahead of the woman. I think she paused a moment to speak to someone, another woman, I think."

"Be certain." The man would never become a cyber. He entertained too many doubts.

"A woman," Cattaneo said after a moment's hesitation. "The burden was heavy," he explained. "And there were calls and abuse from some who were watching. Young people who were kept in line by guards."

"And?"

"That is all, master."

"You kept in personal physical contact with the sac at all times?"

"Yes. At least, almost."

"Explain." Lim condemned the man as he listened. To have neglected such an item in his initial report was beyond forgiveness. "An emergency during which you were blinded by dust, knocked into and separated from the sac-and you failed to mention it?"

"Master, it was a matter of seconds."

Long enough for an exchange to have been made and Lim was convinced that is what had happened. Dumarest here in the body of Carina Davaranch while his own rested safe in Zabul. To kill and destroy, then to return to the safety he had arranged.

A neat plan and one he could appreciate, pitiful as it was in its limitations. But how had Dumarest, locked in the physically weak body of a woman, hoped to destroy the ship and crew?

Hurt, unarmed, hampered by a foreign musculature-the failure of his attack proved how unfit he was. How then? How?

Lim looked at the sac, the figure it contained. A dummy, he was certain, but what else?

To Cattaneo he said, "Prepare for space. I want that sac to be removed to a point on the far side of Zabul and placed in a synchronic orbit. Use all the help you need but exercise the greatest care."

A bomb, Lim thought. It had to be a bomb. Explosives shaped and fashioned into the likeness of a man. Set with detonators and capable of blowing the Saito to dust. Already he could have left it too late.

The period of tension eased as the minutes passed and the sac was removed from the hold and the vicinity of the ship. Only when it was well clear did he return to the cabin where Dumarest was held.

It was a place of torment in which agony was king.

Dumarest looked at his hands, seared, crushed, broken, the fingers robbed for all time of their delicate skills. The wrists showed puckered wounds and both elbows ached from repeated blows. Acts performed with scientific detachment by a man with the smooth, uncaring face of an angel.

"Master." He turned as Lim entered the cabin, not bowing, but appearing to cringe. "As yet no success."

"Leave us." As the door closed behind him Lim said, "I would prefer to dispense with this barbarism but if necessary it can continue."

"Until I die?"

"Is that your objective?"

"Pain," said Dumarest. "Apply enough of it and you can make a saint plead to become a sinner. You are hardly subtle, cyber."

"And you are being willfully stupid. What can continued refusal gain? You are here, alive, and will continue to be kept that way. In pain and torment, but alive. Where is your body?"

Dumarest shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You insist on continuing the pretense but it is a waste of time. I know you used the affinity twin to take over the body of the woman. I know your body is somewhere in Zabul." Lim saw the sudden tension of the broken hands. "The dummy you brought here is now far distant in space. A bomb, of course. One which would be detonated when you stopped relaying a biological signal. Did you swallow a capsule to monitor the beating of your heart?" Again he saw the betraying movement of the hands. "You have been clever in a primitive fashion but now you see that cleverness was not enough. You are here. Your body is in Zabul. I shall demand it be handed over and will destroy the entire installation if it is not. Piece by piece, naturally, with due warning given as to which part is next. How many warnings will I have to give? How much destruction will they accept?"

Dumarest said, "Try it and they will blast you from space."

"So you admit your body is there?"

"I admit nothing. God! My hands!"

Twin furnaces of searing agony rose to fog his mind with a dull haze shot with brittle lightning. The pain diminished that in his chest by contrast. The man with the angelic face had known his trade.

"The sequence?"

"Go to hell!"

"No, Dumarest, it is you who will dwell in hell. The pain in your hands is nothing to what that body you are wearing can be made to suffer. A prelude to what will happen once your own body is in my hands. But, for now, the eyes, I think. Acid placed in each corner so as to burn out the orbs. Later we shall try the application of mental probes. Stimulation of the pain center of the brain will cause no physical damage but will yield unimaginable torment. The sequence?"

"My hands! I can't-"

"Write? Of course not. But you can gesture." Lim freed the broken appendages from their clamps. "Here." He placed a sheet on the table before Dumarest. It was marked with the fifteen molecular units. "Just point to each as they are to be united to form the chain."

Dumarest lifted a hand, blood dripping from the wounded fingers, touched the sheet and left only smears.

"Try again." Lim replaced the sheet with another, watching as, again, Dumarest failed.

"I can't. Give me something to point with. A stylo." Dumarest took it, fighting the pain as he forced torn flesh to obey, stabbed the point at the symbols one after the other. "There!"

"Do it again." Lim followed the pattern. It was the same but he had no way of telling if it was correct. "The acid, I think. It is important to be sure."

"No!" Dumarest sagged, a man trapped in an alien body, broken, pleading. "I want to help. You can check I'm telling the truth. On Zabul. I marked the sequence on my skin. In case I forgot. For God's sake don't hurt me again!"

"Your body?"

"In a casket. I'll show you!"

The obvious hiding place. Lim turned and touched the button of a communicator. "Captain? Take us at once to Zabul. Direct contact."

Moments yet before the ship could move. Time in which the cyber could check the situation-to realize the error he could have made. As Lim turned again to the communicator Dumarest lunged from the table.

He was slow, awkward, lacking strength and judgment but his objective was simple; to gain time. To prevent the cyber from canceling his order. Lim staggered as Dumarest slammed against him, falling back, hands lifting as Dumarest thrust the stylo at an eye. The blow missed, the point catching the skin at the side of the face, ripping it to mix blood with the ink. A struggle ended as the cyber struck back in turn to send Dumarest to the floor, there to lie in a raw tide of pain.

A red fury which dissolved in a gush of searing white flame.

Death was an ending, a release and, for him, a transition. Lying in the sac, Dumarest looked at the naked splendor of the galaxy beyond the taut membrane and wondered if it was always like that. But it had been Carina who had died-his turn was yet to come.

He reached for the controls and looked at the bulk of Zabul, at the dying haze beyond it where the Saito had been. A nimbus grew as the jets moved him toward the artificial world, fading in expanding vapor soon to be nothing but a host of spreading atoms. A pyre in which Lim had died, his acolytes, the crew and Carina Davaranch. Her genius deserved a better monument.

Suited figures moved toward the sac as it neared the port and within it Althea was waiting.

"Earl!" Her arms closed around him with unsuspected strength. "I thought you were dead. Earl!"

"Easy." The memory of lacerated lungs was too recent as was that of broken hands. "You must have known I was safe. You saw the sac taken from the ship."

"Yes, but we didn't know you were in it. How-" She shook her head, baffled. "After all that trouble to get you why did they let you go?"

A gamble taken and won and he thought about it when, later, he sipped wine in the warm comfort of her room. At the last Lim must have known and it gave a special pleasure to remember his eyes, the shock of understanding. The recognition of his error must have given the cyber a foretaste of hell.

"A bomb," he explained as Althea sat at his side. "I made it and planted it against the hull. Kusche helped me to carry it and tampered with the fuses but I'd lied to him and he wasted his time. Even so it was proof of what I'd suspected."

"So you killed him?"

"No. Carina did that."

"The bitch! She almost laughed at me, Earl. When you were being carried to the port. I could have killed her!"

Instead she had done as he'd asked and never realized the conversation had been to remind her of what needed to be done.

Now, frowning, she said, "I still don't understand. Why the arranged accident? All we did was to sound the alarm and fill the air with dust and bump into those men carrying the sac."

A bluff and it had worked. Dumarest looked at his wine, thinking of the chance he had taken. The gamble which he'd been unable to avoid. His use of the affinity twin had been certain to be discovered but he had to make sure it was done in such a way as not to be obvious. And then, at the right moment, sow the doubt which had sent Lim on the one path which would rob the cyber of victory.

At the last, surely, he must have known.

Known there had been no time to make a dummy and switch it for the real man. Known that his own cautious logic had trapped him into falling a victim to the deception. Known too, at the last, that all Dumarest had done and said had been aimed at making him move the vessel once the sac was safely away.

The Erhaft field itself had detonated the bomb. "Earl?" Althea touched his hand and smiled when he looked toward her. "I've been talking to some of the young ones. They aren't happy. They think as you do: the Council is too old and reluctant to change. Volodya tends to side with them."

"So?"

"To them you're a hero, Earl. More than that." Pausing she added, "They want you to guide them to Earth."